I've long been intrigued by geothermal energy. It is available everywhere and isn't intermittent so it can supply baseload power. But in most places we have to go a mile or more deep to reach rocks hot enough for large scale systems. It's closer in a few places.

A routine drilling operation for a geothermal power plant on Big Island, Hawaii encountered dacite magma at a depth of 2.5 km. This is the first contact with magma beneath the surface of the Earth – the finding could ultimately lead to the exploitation of the molten rock as an energy source.

“This is like Jurassic Park for geologists, to see this thing in its natural habitat,” said Bruce Marsh of John Hopkins University who, together with Lucien Bronicki of Ormat Technologies and William Teplow of US Geothermal, revealed the findings at the American Geophysical Union's autumn meeting in December. “It’s like seeing a dinosaur frolicking in an open field.”

The scientists calculate that the magma is likely to be 1050 °C, making the site possibly the hottest commercial geothermal well ever drilled. More typically, a geothermal site could expect temperatures of 500 °C at a depth of 5 km. The large volume of high-temperature rock at such a shallow depth could provide ideal to research heat-extraction methods from volcanic systems for energy generation.

I'm not sure why there is so little buzz about geothermal energy, but it's already a significant energy source.

Geothermal energy systems currently in use in the US – mostly in California, Hawaii, Utah and Nevada – produce about the same amount of electricity each year as solar and wind power combined. Unlike solar and wind power, geothermal systems can operate continuously to provide firm power and are not dependent on the weather.

I imagine energy exploration and development companies swithching from drilling for oil and gas to drilling for hot rocks. It seems that the skills and technologies developed for fossil fuel extraction would be useful. As noted in earlier posts ^1,2 there are pilot programs to test the conclusions of an interesting MIT-led study that geothermal "could supply a substantial portion of the electricity the United States will need in the future, probably at competitive prices and with minimal environmental impact. ." See full report: The Future of Geothermal Energy (pdf).